Biographies

It’s a Cinderella story: Out of nowhere, a flaky, infectiously enthusiastic pitcher captures the nation’s attention, a happy reminder that baseball is fun and a business.

It’s also a story that – in the age of 24/7 blogging, sports-talk radio, fantasy-team-building and other hype-machine-feeders designed to suck the life, and pleasure, out of fandom – seems unlikely to happen again.

But in 1976, Mark Fidrych did happen – an awkward-looking, 21-year-old with the Detroit Tigers with uncanny control and unexpected on-the-field shenanigans, like talking to the ball and congratulating teammates on routine plays – and baseball was all the better for it. And, as Wilson shows in “The Bird,” it still is.

Through interviews with family, old friends and as many teammates as he could find, Wilson spends as much time capturing the world that Fidrych came from, and never really left, as he does showing how he became a star overnight – and, just as quickly, thanks to misdiagnosed injuries and overwork, disappeared from baseball. The “Bird” he captures is a reminder that there’s still joy in the game, in playing and sharing the experience.

Root, root, root for the home team: One of the early games that helped build Fidrych’s reputation was against the Brewers in Detroit, when he pitched an 11-inning, complete-game victory. Announcer Bob Uecker, who also did “Monday Night Baseball” for ABC that season, remembered Fidrych’s tenacity in the Milwaukee Brewers game and told his booth-mates they were in for a treat. That game, on national television against the New York Yankees, made Fidrych a national celebrity.

“Phenom: The Making of Bryce Harper” by Rob Miech. Griffin. 376 pages. $16.99.

Unlike Fidrych, who came out of nowhere to be a star, Bryce Harper – the 2012 National League Rookie of the Year – was molded for the purpose from a young age. His parents took him out of high school and had him get his G.E.D. so he could go to junior college at 17 to accelerate his climb to the majors, with every step of the way choreographed with a big payoff in mind. Sportswriter Miech had unparalleled access to Harper and his family as he methodically worked his way toward his goal of the big leagues – and, as important, a huge contract as a No. 1 draft pick with the Washington Nationals. “Phenom,” an updated version of Miech’s 2012 book “The Last Natural,” takes a lot of the romance out of the quest for the majors, but puts the hard work involved into context. And the fact that Harper managed to live up to all the hype last season – he’ll even get his own bobblehead this year – is a sign that the hard work was worth it.

“The DiMaggios: Three Brothers, Their Passion for Baseball, Their Pursuit of the American Dream” by Tom Clavin. Ecco. 288 pages. $25.99.

We all know where Joe DiMaggio’s gone – the Yankee Clipper may be the most celebrated, idolized, scrutinized and second-guessed star baseball ever produced – but we don’t think as much about his brothers Vince and Dom, both major stars in their own right. Clavin, the author of a biography of another over-scrutinized Yankee great (Roger Maris), dives deep to tell their stories in interconnected fashion, showing how each built his life, career and persona in contrast to the other. While there aren’t many new revelations about Joe – he still comes off as aloof, self-absorbed and easily slighted – Dom and Vince merit the attention, as does the world they all came from as first-generation Americans trying to succeed in a new land. (Note: This book is due out in May.)

Piazza’s title for most home runs hit by a major-league catcher seems pretty secure, even if he doesn’t, in this heartfelt if sometimes whiny memoir. Best section: Piazza relating the living-in-a-fishbowl experience of reports in 2002 that he was gay, triggering rumors, late-night TV jokes and even a Belle & Sebastian song (Piazza insists he wasn’t offended by the “charge of being homosexual,” but by the “general insinuation that, if I were gay, I wouldn’t want everybody knowing about it” – an interesting statement in a world where, to this day, not a single current male athlete in a major professional U.S. sport has acknowledged being gay.)

This book – written in the third person, including, oddly, long passages of others’ accolades for Francona and interviews with people Francona routinely bashes – offers an unusual, rewriting-history approach to the period, when the Red Sox put an end to their overhyped curse and were, until they got old, imploded or both, one of baseball’s most dominant teams.

Root, root, for the home team: Francona recalls his final season as a player in the majors, as the 25th man on the Brewers’ 1990 roster. Robin Yount, who won the American League MVP title the year before, made sure that Francona had a car to drive while in Milwaukee.

Inside the game

In 1930s North Dakota, the owner of a semiprofessional team in Bismarck set out to put together the best team his money could buy. And to do that, he picked up some of the day’s best Negro League players, including Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Quincy Trouppe and, in a real coup, Satchel Paige, who had bolted from his previous team in a salary dispute.

Dunkel overreaches a bit when he says Bismarck team owner Neal Churchill “broke” the color line. Although the Bismarck club was unusual in that it had as many black players as white players, other semipro teams of that time also signed up Negro League stars whenever they could (a fact Dunkel points out throughout “Color Blind”). But he otherwise does a terrific job of capturing a long-neglected topic in baseball history – semipro baseball – in its heyday, and paints a vivid picture of the sports’ role in the lives of the communities where it was played. He also shows that the history of integration in professional baseball is not as clear-cut as you might think.

It’s been done before: Follow a team for an entire season and tell the story of its journey, and yours. Mann, straight out of the writing program at the University of Iowa, took that path, following the Class A Clinton LumberKings for the 2010 season, getting to know the players, the coaches, the fans and the town.

But unlike many year-in-the-life-of-a-team books, “Class A” weaves them all together in a fabric that feels like it’s about something more, without trying too hard to be. The result, while heavy on the sentimentality, takes you deep into the world of the minor league and the cities where it’s played. (Note: This book is due out in May.)

Baseball fans generally don’t agree on much, but there is consensus on one point: Ted Williams was the greatest hitter in the history of the game. In this ambitious and engaging project, Heller, a sports web producer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, set out to get the truth straight from the players’ mouths, getting feedback from more than 80 who played with or against Williams during his career.

What emerges is a picture you don’t always see of Williams: a man who, confident in his own abilities, loved to talk baseball, eagerly helped others (even rivals) learn the game, and never forgot a face. What also emerges through Heller’s dogged efforts is a scrapbook-style look at the way the game was played in the 1940s and ’50s, from an amazing variety of players, from short-timers to greats such as Bob Feller, who died not long after his interview; Virgil Trucks, who died this month; and Yankee great Don Larsen.

Root, root, root for the home team: Milwaukee links to Williams were few, since he played in the American League when Milwaukee’s club was in the National League. But Heller includes interviews with at least three Milwaukee-tied players: Red Wilson, a catcher and a Milwaukee native who later founded a bank in Madison; former Milwaukee Brave pitcher Gene Conley; and Del Crandall, the former Braves catcher and Brewers manager, who managed opposite Williams when the latter led the Texas Rangers in 1972.

“Summers at Shea” by Ira Berkow. Triumph. 254 pages. $14.95.

New York Times baseball columnist Berkow has been covering the game for nearly 50 years, and while this collection of columns from the Times and elsewhere sometimes has a throwaway feel to it, the writing never does. It’s also the kind of book where browsing pays off, unearthing candid conversations with greats ranging from Bob Gibson to Tom Seaver.

Trivia and footnotes

“Inside the Baseball Hall of Fame” Simon & Schuster. 178 pages. $35.

This book – a picture-book tour through some of the more amazing artifacts at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. – is a catalog of must-see stuff, not just for fans of baseball history but for anyone curious about where the game has been.

There’s lots you’d expect to find in what’s essentially a marketing brochure for the Hall – Lou Gehrig’s jersey, Roberto Clemente’s cap, that super-rare 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card, a Satchel Paige jersey – but also a lot of stuff you can’t believe still exists: the glove used by Cleveland’s Neal Ball to make the first unassisted triple play – in 1909; the promissory note selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees; announcer Russ Hodges’ score card from the game during which he exclaimed, “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!

Root, root, root for the home team: “Inside” craftily includes memorabilia that likely touches just about every team’s fans. Among the Milwaukee-connected items: Robin Yount’s 1989 batting helmet, from the year he won his second MVP trophy; the glove Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix wore when he threw 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves in 1959 at County Stadium; and Hank Aaron’s 1957 MVP award (when he was a Milwaukee Brave).

Haudricourt, who has covered the Milwaukee Brewers and baseball for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee Sentinel since 1985, missed the team’s first and only (so far) appearance in the World Series in 1982, but didn’t miss much else, as he shows in this, his third Brewers book. Leaning heavily on the ballclub’s recent-years’ heroics, “100 Things” lives up to its title, touching on everything from the departures of fan favorites (Paul Molitor, Gorman Thomas) to the arrival of the Racing Sausages, from the heroics of Tony Plush to the second-longest game in major-league history (no, it wasn’t pitched by Randy Wolf.)

Books of lists are designed to start arguments, and this one’s no exception. Bondy, a New York Daily News columnist, piles together some lists of worst hitters, fielders and pitchers of all time, along with some idiosyncratic rosters clearly intended to get conversations started at your favorite sports bar or man cave. On that level, “Who’s on Worst?” connects.

Root, root, root for the home team: Among the Milwaukee-connected “honorees” on Bondy’s lists are Bob Uecker, listed at No. 3 among worst hitters of all time; and Braves pinch-hitter Nippy Jones, No. 7 on the luckiest-players list (he started a rally during the 1957 World Series by claiming to have been hit by a pitch on his shoe).

Legends of the game

Not all the baseball books out this spring are new. Among the better reads are some reissues of some diamond classics, including:

“Pitching in a Pinch” by Christy Mathewson (Penguin Classics, 178 pages, $15). Mathewson, baseball’s first great superstar more than a century ago, also wrote (with a little help) the first great baseball autobiography. The 1912 book has some late-inning help from two Wisconsin-rooted writers: Chad Harbach, the author of acclaimed novel “The Art of Fielding,” wrote the new introduction; and legendary sportswriter Red Smith, who grew up in Green Bay, wrote the afterword.

“The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century” by Jim Kaplan (Triumph, 242 pages, $14.95 ). Kaplan recounts what may have been the last, and greatest pitcher’s battle between San Francisco Giants star Juan Marichal and Milwaukee Braves lefty Warren Spahn – a 16-inning, 1-0 game in which the pitchers, both future Hall of Famers, went the distance.

“I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography” by Jackie Robinson (Ecco, 320 pages, $14.99). Reissued as a tie-in with “42,” the movie about Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color barrier, due in theaters April 12.

Midseason call-ups

Here are some other baseball books due out later this summer that could be contenders:

“Burleigh Grimes: Baseball’s Last Legal Spitballer” by Joe Niese, $29.95, due out in May ). Niese, a librarian, tells the story of one of baseball’s most determined pitchers – and one of the few Wisconsin natives (born in Clear Lake) in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“We Were the All-American Girls: Interviews With Players of the AAGPBL” by Jim Sargent (McFarland, $39.95). Sargent interviews 42 women who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the Midwest-based league from the 1940s and ’50s chronicled in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” As their ranks dwindle – two of the league’s biggest stars died earlier this year – this promises to be good reading.

“Doc: A Memoir” by Dwight Gooden and Ellis Henican (New Harvest, $27). This much-anticipated memoir from one of the best pitchers the modern game has ever seen – until he flamed out thanks to injuries and drugs – is described as a “brutally honest memoir of talent, addiction and recovery.”